Two important points have been covered here, one by you (getting appropriate authorization before logging on to the servers) and one by the respondents (make sure your current employers are OK with you giving out this kind of advice). It would be bad news if your old and new employers were competitiors, for example.

It's common to feel guilty after leaving a company -- or even hang on somewhere because of the same guilt. but it's important to hold that decision up to the harsh light of Common Business Sense.

You have to decide if it makes financial sense to stay where you are, or whether it makes more sense to leave. Temper that with the judgement you have to make about not leaving a company the first time someone waves more money in your face, of course. You also have to balance how your current employer is treating you against how prospective future employers might treat you, and gauge how the quality of work at each place compares.

I've been in the situation where I was working extremely hard and generally being ignored by my boss and the other managers. The clue by four that finally made me think was when I resolved a technical problem on a very tight deadline, saved the organization from some major egg on the face (along with furious customers) and worked through the night until 1pm the following afternoon to recover .. and no one thanked me.

On the other hand, I'm under a lot of pressure at my current job, but I'm having a lot of fun doing what I'm doing, I'm getting supprt and appreciation from my co-workers and lots of flexibilty. Sometimes it's the small things that make all the difference in that kind of situation.

Finally, toss your thoughts around with someone. It may be that even hearing yourself describing the situation will be enough for you to come to a decision -- then your sibling/best friend can sit there and drink beer and eat chicken wings while you talk about the situation and make your next decision.

I've been in the situation where I was working extremely hard and generally being ignored by my boss and the other managers. The clue by four that finally made me think was when I resolved a technical problem on a very tight deadline, saved the organization from some major egg on the face (along with furious customers) and worked through the night until 1pm the following afternoon to recover .. and no one thanked me.

Im a Unix admin who regularly helps out the Windows folks via the odd script, or more (usually involving Perl) often on mission critical projects. I enjoy sitting back and watching them all pat themselves on their backs when they finish :)

Ted
--"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
Larry Wall for his website
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage ā trois
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
Other (please explain why)